


The Horizon is My Home

by XaviaAndromedovna



Series: Horizontal [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha!Stiles, Angst, BAMF!Stiles, Canon through 3x6, Future Fic, I live in a beautiful world where Boyd isn't dead, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Open-Ended Sterek, Reconciliation, Recreational Drug Use, Stiles Leaves the Pack, Werewolf!Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-20 03:42:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 18,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XaviaAndromedovna/pseuds/XaviaAndromedovna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Sheriff is murdered by an old enemy, Stiles returns to Beacon Hills for the first time in three years, to people he hasn't spoken to in five.  Their packs must work together, which, true to Beacon Hills fashion, is easier said than done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For context, this is a (comparatively much longer) sequel to [Blue Horizon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/878569) by request. I'm fully prepared for this to be Jossed, and fully prepared not to care. Sorry for the distinct lack of beta!

Stiles is in his junior year of college when he gets the call he’s been dreading since he was 10.

“Hey dad, what’s up?”

“…A …Aiden…” the Sheriff manages.

Stiles freezes in the middle of the quad.  “Dad?!  Dad, what’s wrong?!”

“I… llllove…”  His dad lets out a breath.  Stiles allows the silence to penetrate his soul for a minute before calmly hanging up and booking the next flight to California while he walks back to his apartment.

His girlfriend Julie, a junior Women’s Studies major from Missouri, blanches at the sight of his face.

“What happened?” she asks with barely restrained concern.

“It’s my dad,” he sighs, voice cracking.  “An omega the McCall-Hales fought.”  Julie doesn’t bother responding, only gets up and wraps her partner in gracefully firm arms, resting her head on his shoulders as he sobs into hers.  She talks him down from the ensuing panic attack, and when his heart rate stabilizes she fixes him a mug of lukewarm tea from the pot she’d made before he arrived.

“When are you leaving?”

“The plane takes off in a few hours.  I just needed to grab some things.”  He jumps to his feet to begin the packing process.

“Want me to go with you?”

He looks up at her with fondness.  “YES.  But it’s a truly awful idea and besides, I can’t ask you to do that.”

“I’m your girlfriend, you can absolutely ask me to do that.”  She stands him still and hands him the tea, the familiar smell of their friend Dimya’s ‘special blend’ wafting through the apartment.  “You’ll need back-up.”

“I’m not scared of Aiden,” he insists with the resoluteness of a leader, even as he childishly sips his tea.

“That’s not what I thought you’d need back up for.”  The look she gives him causes him to collect his thoughts before answering.

“It’s not seeing them again that I’m afraid of.  I’m afraid that I won’t be able to walk away from them a second time.”

 

~~~

He makes three calls on the way to the airport.  The first is to his advisor, who assures him that all his professors will be notified and that he’s willing to listen if Stiles wants to talk.  He doesn’t.  The second is to the Beacon Hills Police Department to see if they can tell him anything of value and set up a meeting to settle their affairs.  The third is to his stepmom, Melissa McCall-Stilinski, the woman who’s been his surrogate mother for over a decade.

“Stiles, thank god.  Did you hear?”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“Was it a—“

“Yeah, it was Aiden.”

“Ethan’s brother?  How do you know?”

“I’ll let you know when I get there.”

“Call me when you land, I’ll pick you up.”

“That’s not necessary Mrs… mom.”

“You’re staying here and that’s final, Stiles.”  Stiles smiles to himself at the headstrong woman who always took care of him no matter how begrudgingly.  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for either one of us to be alone tonight.”

He lets out a sardonic chuckle.  “Yeah, that’s probably wise.  See you soon.”

 

~~~

The Sheriff decided it was the right time for Stiles to fill him in when he requested that his dad get an ‘upgrade’ from Chris Argent.

“Okay, listen up.  I’ve been _really_ lenient with you this past year, but I’m gonna need answers.  You’ve been lying, showing up at crime scenes repeatedly, you _had a restraining order against you_ , you’ve been acting strange, and now I hear that you’ve cut out every single one of your friends, changed English classes without telling me, and don’t think I haven’t noticed your little home improvement projects.”  Stiles, surprisingly, got his predilection for rambling from his father, though the resemblance was only noticeable when the Sheriff was particularly emotional.  Normally, he’d just redirect and half-explain like always, but suddenly he realized, ‘wait a minute, why exactly am I still protecting them?  If anyone needs to be in the loop, it’s the man who’s in harm’s way daily.’  He steeled himself for the inevitable ‘you’re fucking joking’ scoff, and started the conversation he’d been dreading since the death of Laura Hale.

“Dad, I need you to listen to what I have to say very carefully before responding, then I’ll need you to talk to Ms. McCall and ask her to have Scott prove it to you.  She’ll confirm everything.  I need you to get wolfsbane bullets from the Argents because it’s the only way to protect yourself the next time you’re confronted by a werewolf.”

It was the most heated argument in Stilinski history.  John told Stiles to get the fuck out of his house.  Stiles made a phone call to Ms. McCall himself from the front porch and sat there calmly waiting for his ex-best friend to arrive.  When the car pulls up, he goes back inside and heads up to his room, shouting down to the living room, “the McCalls are here, you might wanna listen.”  Once the Sheriff was finally convinced that Stiles wasn’t being an asshole and was actually trying to protect his only living family member from werewolves, things made a whole lot more sense.  That is, everything except why Scott was watching Stiles with conflicting emotion and Stiles was looking anywhere else but at the werewolf. 

“Thank you, Scott, that’s all.”

“Look, I know this is important, but—“

“Scott.  No.  You’ve returned a favour, we’re even.  Go home.”

“I’m sorry about—“

“WOW, okay, you know what?  You can take your fake apology and go directly to Hell.  Do not pass go, do not collect 200 fucking dollars.  Go.  Away.  Now.”

The glare Stiles gave him let Scott know that there was no coming back from what had done.  He used Stiles Stilinski for the last time.  Scott lowered his head and got in the car, followed by Ms. McCall, stunned into silence.

The Sheriff came up behind him as he shut the front door.  “Wanna tell me what that was about?”

Stiles proceeded to tell his dad about his blow-up with the packs, then quickly changed the subject.  He instructed the Sheriff in the uses of mountain ash, wolfsbane, mistletoe, pretty much any supernatural substance he could remember from flashes of conversations with Deaton.  He told him about the Code, because as the token humans-no-longer-linked-to-any-pack, they might as well follow it, and it was a good general rule anyway for a Sheriff who might otherwise be inclined to forget his duty to protect and serve if not thoroughly assured that werewolves were not _inherently_ antithetical to that mission.

He answered all of his father’s questions with precision and relief except one.

“Are you serious about not fixing things with Scott?”

“Yeah, dad, I’m serious,” he said numbly, though he couldn’t look the man in the eye.  “I think we’re done for good this time.”

 

~~~

When Scott hears the news that his mother’s husband of only two years, the man he’d thought of as a father long before then, has been killed, he rushes to console her in the other house he grew up in that the two parents were sharing.  He finds it empty.  His calls to her phone go straight to voicemail.  He panics.  The entirety of the McCall-Hale alliance is in the old Stilinski house by the time a car pulls onto the street.  They smell a foreign wolf approaching, yet its scent is somehow familiar.  Scott rushes outside just as he hears a long-forgotten voice shout to his mother, “SCOTT’S HERE?!”

“Stiles?!?!”  His face is the clip-art stock photo of shock.  “Guys, the wolf— it’s Stiles.”


	2. Chapter 2

Awkward is when you fart in public or accidentally call your aunt by her dead sister’s name.  The atmosphere in the Stilinski house when Stiles arrives is downright painful.  There are 87 seconds of dead silence.  Stiles counts.  No one wants to be that person who triggers World War III.  But there are strangers in his father’s house— the house he grew up in— and sooner or later someone has to throw the first punch.  So he does what he does best.  He starts talking.

“My father called me while he was… umm… he said that Aiden murdered him.  I came here to bury my father and kill Aiden.  I’ll be off your territory once it’s over.  Scott, Derek, is this agreeable to you?”

Ethan and Cora make to speak, but glares from their respective alphas keep them in line.  Derek, who is characteristically the least emotionally effected, responds with a terse but civil ‘yes’.  Scott struggles a bit more to keep his emotions in check, but age and responsibility has served him well.

“We’ll help you avenge him.  He’s on everyone’s shit list right now.  You’ll have to work with us, though.”

All eyes are nervously set on Stiles awaiting his response.  He wants to retort with a sarcastic, ‘and by ‘with you’ you mean follow along with your stupid half-baked plans and risk my tail while I do all your dirty work’, but time has (arguably) matured him as well.  He knows that, thanks to his handy-dandy alpha status, he is technically an intruder in his own damn hometown, and challenging the territory’s alphas would literally be a declaration of war between the three packs.  No matter how deep their history.  Fucking werewolves.

“Very well.  What’s the plan?”  The tension lessens just a bit.  There’s still a lot of trepidation and distrust to account for, but they’re at least all on the same page about what to do with Aiden.  Well, except Ethan.

“Take him alive.”  Eyes are glowing all around the room as hairs stand on end.  Luckily, having had a great deal of experience working with multiple alphas at once, Ethan knew to soften his dissention as swiftly as possible, especially now that he was Scott’s beta.  “He’ll pay for all the shit he’s pulled, but he’s my brother.  I have to try.  Besides, I’m the one he’s after.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Wondertwin.  I’m pretty sure he’s got it out for all of us, and he knows that my dad was the one thing we all still had in common.  He’s looking for a fight, and he’s got one.  I’m killing him the first shot I get.”

“Since when are you Mr. ‘shoot now, ask later’?!” Ethan retorts.  Archduke Ferdinand has been assassinated.  Before Scott can get his beta in line, Stiles is claws out, fangs out and about to lunge when Derek steps between the two, eyes glued to Stiles.

“He’s pack, Stiles.  Be very careful what you do.  He may have been your enemy last time you saw him, but you have to trust him.  Stand down.  Both of you.”

Stiles returns to human form and steps back.  “I don’t trust any of you.”

“Yeah, well the feeling’s mutual, ass hat.”

“CORA.”  Derek growls.

“Look,” interjects Allison, voice reminiscent of her mother’s.  “Now isn’t the time.  We need a plan.  We can decide what to do with him after we find him.  Do we have any leads?”

Stiles shoots her a sternly grateful look.  “Dad died at 1:27pm, Eastern Standard Time,” he supplies.  “So, about 12 hours ago.  He could be anywhere, but he’s clearly trying to fuck with us, so he can’t have gone too far.”

“Boyd and I found the body at the old loft,” Isaac adds.  “We could smell that another werewolf had been there and followed the scent to the bank, but it was a decoy.  There was nothing there except for a dirty shirt.”

“Please tell me you kept it,” Peter chimes in snarkily.

Isaac produces the sock from his jacket.  “It’s Aiden’s,” confirms the man’s twin.

“I think he _wants_ to be found,” Boyd states.  “He wants us to come to him; it gives him the upper hand.”

“I agree,” Derek says as he yanks down the map of Beacon Hills that Stiles just noticed for the first time.  Had his dad been working with them while he was gone?  “We need to wait for him to come to us.  He knows us too well, knows how we fight, how we think.  He also knows how to get inside our heads.”  He looks to Stiles at that.

“So then _why_ would we give him time to plan?” is Stiles’ critique, hands flailing in a habit he never quite broke.  “I can’t believe I’m the one saying this, but I think this time we need to hit him fast and hard before he has a chance to get anywhere near our heads.”

Scott steps forward uncomfortably.  “Stiles, Aiden accomplished the impossible task of bringing you back to Beacon Hills.  I think he’s already in our heads.”

Stiles screws his face in clear disapproval, but nods nonetheless.  “Do we know if he’s working alone?”

“Before Lydia left for London to be with Jackson,” starts Danny, who was apparently bitten sometime between high school and now, “she and I set up a sort of alarm system for if another werewolf enters the area.  We haven’t gotten any hits.”

“At all?  Not even Aiden?”

“Or Stiles, for that matter?”

This bothers Danny.  “No.  Someone must have neutralized the system.  Someone knew it was there in the first place.”

“Would Aiden know that?”

“Depending how long he was still in town after we killed Deucalion, he might have seen it go up.”

“Perfect.”  Stiles pulls at his face in frustration.  “Do we know if he’s still an alpha?”

“No.”

“Do we know anything at all?”  Derek growls a second warning to Stiles.  “Fine.  So since our plan is apparently to wait him out, what do you say we assign detail to all the humans we’re still connected to and call it a night?  Mom and I have to meet with a bunch of people tomorrow so I can do the other half of what I came here for, and I still need time to process, if that’s alright with everyone.”  With no disagreement (for once), the packs disperse, leaving Stiles, Scott, and a silent Melissa to establish a guard schedule.  Before Stiles heads off to bed, Scott puts a tentative hand on his arm.

“Thank you for coming back.”

“Didn’t come for you, buddy,” he responds numbly before disappearing up the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're wondering, I'm currently planning on updating daily, but let's be real; I'm still in the process of writing, so don't hate me too much if I'm a dirty liar.


	3. Chapter 3

About a month after the falling out between Stiles and the werewolves, the hyperactive human was in his AP Calc class when he was called to the office.  It appeared that his father needed to talk to him about something important.  Worried, he grabbed his things and headed for the office.  He turned the corner to find Kali waiting for him.

“Ah crap,” he mutters before running back the way he came, to little success.  She tackles him and places her hand over his mouth, claws dancing on the skin above his heart.

“Make a sound and I gut you right here.”

‘You’re gonna kill me anyway, lady, but here would be sloppy, even for you,’ would be his retort if he had the ability to make one, but he simply nods begrudgingly lets her drag him to a supply closet, cataloguing ways he could escape that would result in the least amount of maiming.  He remembers the Argent gun in his backpack and mentally sighs with relief that he had the sense to put a silencer on it.  If only he had five seconds to grab it.

“You’ve been distant lately, Stiles.  Why’s that?” she hisses in his ear.  The only light is through the tiny window in the door, and it gives her just the right blend of mystery and menace.  It also gives Stiles the advantage of looking for a way out.

“I’m trying this new thing where I stay out of all the werewolf bullshit.  It’s actually working quite nicely for me.”

“Oh, Stiles,” she smirks condescendingly.  “You really think we haven’t been watching you and your little pack for longer than your fake squabble?”

“I don’t have a pack.”

Kali is confused for a second.  “You’re not lying.”

Stiles grins sarcastically.  “Like I said.  Your werewolf problems?  Not my problem.”  He tries to shoulder past her to the door but she pushes him into the rack behind him, eyes glowing alpha red and claws at his neck.

“Then there’s no reason to keep you alive, is there?”

He has five seconds to save himself from legitimate death.  Good thing his brain is in constant overdrive.  It gives him his most ridiculous plan to date.

One.

He grabs for her stomach and starts tickling, squeaking “got your tummy!”  The look on the wolf’s face is a priceless swirl of confusion, shock, and just a tiny morsel of amusement.

Two.

As she growls and instinctively takes her hands off him to yank his arms away, he lets his left be caught while reaching behind him with his right for the first thing he can find, which happens to be the handle of a large bottle of bleach.  He launches it at her face.

Three.

Kali fights with the bleach while Stiles reaches around into the Velcro pouch on his backpack.

Four.

She lunges at him wildly as he removes and cocks the gun.

Five.

He shoots her in the head with a wolfsbane bullet.  She falls to the ground dead.

 

Scott decides the proper time to burst into the supply closet is as he pulls the trigger.  He watches his human former best friend single-handedly kill one of the more menacing alphas against them.

The next minute is a staring contest to see who can look the most traumatized.

Scott breaks the formidable silence, his voice cracking.  “Are you okay?”

Stiles looks him in the eyes, struggling not to process what he just did.  “I can take care of myself.”  He walks away calmly, Scott frozen in place and gawking.  Stiles waits to turn the corner before passing out.

Two days later, he heard from his dad that Deucalion had been found dead and that Aiden was gone.  He smiled, because he was finally done with the monsters outside his window.

 

~~~

He met Julie first semester of college in his Intro to Women’s Studies course.  She was the first transgender person he ever encountered.

“Julie!” he calls as they walk out of the first class.

“Stiles, right?”  She smiles cautiously.

“Yep,” Oh god, she didn’t just ignore him.  This is _so_ much better than high school.  And by better, he means completely terrifying.  “That’s me, I’m… Stiles…”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, sorry, I just wanted to say I thought it was really cool what you shared with us.  You know, about your past.  I’ve never met a trans person before, so it was kinda mind-blowing to hear what that’s like.”

She laughs nervously, with equal parts curiosity and disappointment in her eyes.  “Thanks, glad I could be your token…” she starts to walk away but he catches up to her.

“Shit, sorry!  That’s not what I meant.  I just meant— I used to know people who were…” what’s the non-werewolf word for ‘hunted?’ “stigmatized for having, well, bodies that changed with context.  And it was refreshing to see that in a less threatening way.  I guess, I just, wanted to tell you that weirdly I understand.  And I think you’re really cool.”  Stiles feels extremely uncomfortable, and is 99% sure he either said something incredibly offensive or pretty much outed himself as the werewolf whisperer.  Julie isn’t doing much better, if the silent surprise on her face as she outright _stares_ at him is any indication.

Eventually she smiles, a very warm, incredulously relieved smile.  It makes him blush.  “I’m starting to think that of the two of us, you’re the more interesting study.”

Stiles gulps.  No one’s ever flirted back before and not been joking.  “Maybe we could test that theory over lunch sometime?”

“Does right now count?”

He exhales a giddy laugh.  “Yeah, in fact I hear right now is the best sometime.  I think we’re doing a study on it in my Psych class.”

Julie rolls her eyes for nowhere near the last time.

 

~~~

Two hours later, Julie and Stiles were still going strong on their date.

“He seriously thought you meant…”

“attracted to pans.  Never said he was the brightest.”

“Oh wow, that’s unfortunate.”

“You should’ve seen his face when I got my first boyfriend.  I honestly couldn’t tell if he was confused because I was with a guy, or because I wasn’t with a kitchen utensil.”

Her laugh is one the prettiest things Stiles has ever seen.  Probably because it’s the first time since Scott that someone laughed with him, not at him.

“Okay, so your first boyfriend…”

“Yeah we only lasted two weeks in senior year.  We were team mates.  Fun fact I learned: hockey players?  Not my type.”

“And before then?”

He gives her a playfully cautious look.  “Isn’t it considered inappropriate to talk about exes on the first date?”

The mockingly amused look she gives him reminds him of someone he didn’t want to think about.  “I think we’re both pretty inappropriate in general.  Besides, I’ve never had a relationship before, so I live vicariously through my friends.  Spill!”

“There was a girl from another school I almost lost it to, but it didn’t work out.”

She frowns in confusion.  “Why not?”

‘Because she was abducted by the Darach slash evil werewolf who killed my friend?’  “That one’s definitely a story for another day.  And before that, well, let’s just say all my ‘relationships’ were one-sided.”

She looks down at her long-empty food wrappers and chooses her words carefully.  “Home isn’t a good memory for you, is it?”

He considers it for a long time.  “It has its moments.  I spent a good deal of time hating everything about it, but it holds almost all of my good memories too.  I don’t think it can be good or bad, it’s just, home.  You know?”

Stiles sees a lifetime dance across her face in one moment.  He can tell that there’s a story there, and he wants nothing more than to hear it, hear every detail about the amazing woman before him.  But now is clearly not the time, because he’s only seen that face twice before: on Isaac Lahey and Derek Hale.

“You know, home isn’t where you’re born, Julie.  If there’s anything the past two years have taught me, it’s that you have to make your own home.”

She chuckles.  “I couldn’t agree more.”  And as the semesters came and went, they became home.


	4. Chapter 4

The meeting with the police turned up little Stiles and Melissa didn’t already know.  The meeting with the lawyer was a little more eye-opening.  There were no surprises concerning either of them in the will, but the Sheriff had bequeathed things to two people Stiles did not expect: Scott McCall and Derek Hale.  The modest sum for Scott was understandable on reflection, as his stepson, but to Derek was left the contents of a safety deposit box.  Naturally, Stiles tried everything to find out what was in it, but the lawyer was clear that it was none of his goddamn business.

The drive to the new Hale house— considerably smaller than the old Hale house— saw Stiles racking his brain for what his dad could possibly have for Derek, and more importantly, _why_.  They didn’t even like each other… right?  Just how much had Stiles missed?

When he pulls up to the wooded property about a mile away from the old site, he gawks a bit at how domestic it looks.  The Derek he remembers was 80% broody angst and 20% misunderstood Romantic hero.  It seems Ms. Blake was good for him after all.

He doesn’t sense Derek, so he knocks on the door instead and Mrs. Jennifer Hale answers, looking very much the part of the tired mother. He’d heard they had a baby about six months ago.

“Stiles!” she exclaims with surprise and carefully masked distaste.  “How are you?”

“I assume Derek’s not home?”

“No, he got called by a lawyer about your father.  Sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.  I just met with the lawyer.  Apparently Dad left him something in a safety deposit box.  Know anything about it?”

“No,” she says curiously, with a hint of suspicion.

“Do you mind if I wait here for him?  We have some things we need to talk about.”

She’s not entirely pleased with the plan, but she ushers him in with a, “sure!”  The house is generally well-kept, except for a disaster area in the middle of the living room that is quarantined by a baby-high fence.  In the center sat the implied baby, smiling and quietly babbling to itself while it played with a colourful plastic ring.

“Right, I heard you had a kid.”

“Yeah!  That’s our son, Eric.”

“Eric,” Stiles repeats softly, a memory resurfacing.  “Lemme guess, named after—“

“Yes, your friend Erica.”

He approaches the child with fondness and sadness.  He manages not to cry as visions of Erica streak across his mind.  “He has Derek’s eyes.”

This comment makes Jennifer even more uncomfortable, her smile tightening.  “Stiles, why exactly are you here?”

“We need a plan.”

“Don’t you think that would be better settled at a pack meeting?”

He holds his own irritation in check before answering.  “I don’t know if you heard, but the Model UN that was ‘pack meeting’ was a freaking bloodbath waiting to happen.  Personally, I don’t like any of you people, but at least I can trust Derek to be all business.”

“God,” she sighs, the façade of civility between them finally broken.  “What the heck did I ever do to you?  You’ve been hostile to me ever since I found out about all this werewolf stuff, and I don’t get it.  I’ve gone out of my way to be nice to you several times and you just throw it back in my face like I’m personally trying to mess up your life.  Well guess what, Stiles?  You’re the one that’s been moping around for five years playing the martyr when things didn’t go your way with Derek.”

“Excuse me?”

She backs off.  It’s the one place she hates going: Stiles and Derek.  The more she thinks about which pieces are missing in the big showdown, the less she wants answers.  But she got Stiles started, and if there’s one thing he does best, it’s mouthing off.

“I’m sorry, but I never asked you to ‘go out of your way’ for anything.  Remind me: how much did you know about werewolves at that point?  Oh right, you’d been in this for a _week_ , and there you were pretending like you had every right to be there and I was just some poor unfortunate kid who got lost on the way to the SATs and not the one who’d been saving their asses on an almost monthly basis for a year.  Alright, this was never about pity for you, this was a pissing contest over Derek and you know it.”  He’s absolutely livid, and when she recoils in sheer terror, he realizes he’d shifted.  Eric starts crying.  He instantly shifts back, remorse clear on his face.

“Sorry, that was out of line.”

She nods in acknowledgement then attends to her son.  When she responds several minutes later, it’s with forced calm.  “All I’m saying is get over it, okay?”

“I am over it.  I’ve been over it for three years, and I’d still be over it if I wasn’t back here in the same old rut I left in the first place.”

“Doesn’t the fact that you fell into the exact same rut tell you that you aren’t over it?  I mean, if you really don’t care about these people you used to say were your best friends, then why are you letting them get to you?”

He seriously considers it for a few seconds.  “Of course, of all the people on this trip to hit the nail on the head, it’s you…” he sighs quietly.

“Look, I want you back in your own separate life just as much as you do,”

“I’m sure you do,” he mutters.

“But I have to keep my husband safe, and he’s not safe if you’re going to be a powder keg every time you encounter someone from your past.”

“Yeah, I know.”  Eric is sleeping next to his mother’s breast.  It stirs something deep in Stiles heart.  “May I?”

She’s _so_ not okay with that.  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, since you’re an—“

“Go ahead,” they hear from behind them.  Derek has arrived, paperwork in his hand.  “It’s alright.”

Stiles nods soberly at the werewolf he didn’t hear coming (as always) and deftly extracts Eric from his mother’s hands.  Miracle of miracles, he doesn’t seem to mind being in Stiles’ arms instead, waking up and looking into the strange wolf’s eyes with curiosity.

“He’s beautiful,” Stiles chokes.

“He is.”  Answers Derek.

“Do you know if he’s a wolf yet?”

“No, we shouldn’t know for another four moons or so.  He must really like you.”  Derek watches the two with an expression Stiles has never seen before.  Perhaps pride?  Jennifer, on the other hand, is clearly exuding pissed-off.  Interesting.

“Stiles said he had to talk to you about something.”

Stiles is busy watching the life in his arms.  “Maybe it can wait after all,” he says absently.  He doesn’t know why holding this baby is so satisfying, but it kind of makes him want to be a father.  Then again, speaking of fathers… “right, sorry.”  He hands the baby to Jennifer.  “We need a plan.”

The two alphas spend a few hours hashing out a plan, and from her vantage point in the living room with Eric or in the kitchen with her wine, it seems like old times between the two, or what she imagines that looks like from the stories.  The amount of shouting that entails is less alarming than the equal amount of hidden smiles.

‘Perhaps,’ a voice in the back of her head contributes, ‘Stiles isn’t the jealous one.’


	5. Chapter 5

When Stiles returns home, he notices for the first time that the wolfsbane beds he planted after the fallout had been uprooted and replanted with something else.  It occurs to him that there were about 10 wolves in that house last night, a house in which he had replaced every doorframe and window with mountain ash.

“Hey, mom?” he calls, milling about the house to see what else has changed since he graduated.

“In here, Stiles.”  He finds her in the dining room fussing over considerable amounts of paperwork.

“Hey, um… when did dad take down the mountain ash?”

Melissa smirks to herself sadly.  “About three weeks after you left.”  He stares at her in disbelief with a hint of hurt.  “It made him feel safer when you were here, knowing that you both were protected, but the more he talked to Derek and Scott and the others, the more it felt… unwelcoming.  He had it taken down and the wolfsbane removed before I moved in so that Scott could visit me.”

He just stands there blinking for several moments before words find him again.  “Wow, umm… I probably don’t wanna know, but just how involved was he with the packs?”

Melissa shifts uncomfortably.  “Well, he’s known Scott since you two were in diapers, and when we started seeing each other they spent more time together.  And whenever he suspected a case had something supernatural going on he called Derek in for a consult, and they became friends, which led to him getting to know the packs.”

“Great,” Stiles mutters, “did he tell them about me?”

“No, he only told me, like he promised.  They were pretty shocked last night by that.”

“Yeah well…” he shrugs before changing topics.  “I told him not to tell me anything about what was going on here, but since it’s now my life again, could you fill me in on what I missed?”  He sits at the table as Melissa leans back in her chair, exhaling in preparation to recount the last five years.

Short version: Scott killed Deucalion and became an alpha, while Aiden ran off.  Ethan stayed and gave up his alpha status to join Scott’s pack with Danny, whom he’d bitten (with consent!).  Isaac felt betrayed by Derek and joined Scott’s pack too.  Scott and Allison got back together, Derek and Jen got married and had Eric, and Isaac and Cora got married two months ago, uniting the Hale and McCall packs.  Right before he died, the Sheriff was working a lead on Aiden’s whereabouts in connection to a wolf named Yoli.

Becoming a werewolf gave Stiles little extra grace, and hearing that name makes him nearly fall out of his chair.  “Yoli who?”

“He didn’t mention a last name.  Why?”  Stiles pulls up a picture on his phone and shows it to her.

“Have you ever seen her before?”

“Yeah, in a picture somewhere.  Stiles, who is that?”  But Stiles is already halfway up the stairs.

“I have to make a call, I’ll be down in a bit.”  Once in his room, he calls Julie.

“Hey babe, how’s it going?”

“Get the pack down here as soon as possible; it’s important.”

“Wait, what?  Stiles, what’s wrong?”

“I’ll explain when you get here, just please come soon.”

“Yeah, I… I’ll gather everyone now.  Are you okay?”

“No.” he forces out.  “No, I’m not.  Something’s wrong.  Just get here, please.”

“Alright, we’re on our way.  Love you!”

“Love you too.”  When he hangs up he senses Scott and Ethan approaching the house.  ‘Goddamnit, not now’ he whines internally.  He goes down to meet them.

“Any news?”

“Yeah, I’ve got some news for you Stilinski,” Ethan quips.  “Stay out of my way.”

“ETHAN.” Scott growls.  Stiles’ eyes flash red.

“Look Ethan, I don’t like you, but I don’t actually have a problem with you either, unless you plan to make one.”

“Yeah well I have a problem with you.”

“I’d be delighted to hear why,” Stiles counters, rolling once-again human eyes.

“You walk around here thinking you’re better than us when everyone here thinks you’re a joke.”

Stiles snorts.  “That’s it?  We let Jackson get away with that all the time.  And by the way, the difference between me and Jackson is that he thinks he’s better than everyone whereas I only think I’m better than a glorified doormat.”

“No one ever asked you to help us!”

“THAT’S WHY I LEFT.”

“ **GUYS!** ” Scott roars, wolfed out.  Ethan whimpers and Stiles clenches his jaw.  “Ethan, outside, now.  Keep guard.  Stiles and I clearly have some baggage to work out.”  Ethan obeys, which makes Stiles feel more smug than it should, but now it’s just him and Scott.

“Round three, here we go,” Stiles murmurs as Melissa appears.

“Look, I know you boys have a lot to work out right now, but can you at least pretend to promise me no property damage?”  They nod rather sheepishly.  “Thank you.  I’ll be upstairs with a subwoofer and a bloody Mary and hopefully when I come down I won’t have to seriously consider making a mountain ash timeout corner for two _adults_.”  When she’s out of human earshot, Stiles bursts out laughing, and Scott isn’t too far behind.  The laughter is a feedback loop and suddenly they’re on the floor crying cathartic tears of mirth at just how fucked up their lives are.  When the giggles have subsided, Stiles asks, quietly.  “Dude, what happened to us?”

“I wish I knew, man.  One day you’re my best friend, and the next…”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”  Stiles knows Scott’s remorseful eyes, and these are a textbook example.

“For which part?”

“I treated you like shit.  Repeatedly.  We used to be equals; we used to do everything _together_.  But then I became a werewolf and you let me be Batman, because ‘holy fuck werewolves’, and I just kinda got too used to you being my Robin that I didn’t notice how far gone we were.”

“Glad you figured it out buddy.” Stiles replies weakly, studying the grain pattern of the hall floor.

“I’m sorry I kept making excuses for it, like meeting Allison and helping Isaac.”  Stiles looks up in utter surprise.

“Dude, did I seriously just hear you finally apologize to me for The Allison Chronicles?”

“I’m not saying it again, so cherish the moment.”

“Oh, I’m cherishing.”  A less awkward silence falls for a minute before Stiles speaks up.  “I’m sorry too, for leaving.”

“Yeah, I was like, crazy angry about that for maybe two years, before I finally got my shit together and realized just how crappy I’d been to you.  But to be fair, I never thought you’d just up and leave me without so much as a see you later.  It was Hell working without you.”

“Yeah well you should’ve thought of that before you… you know what?  Let’s save that one for later, shall we?”

“Yeah.”  They look at each other, and what they see is the best friend they’ve been missing for five years.  “So, can we be like, not enemies now?  I’m kind of really bad at grudges.”

Stiles chuckles and hugs his adorably tactless Scott.  “Allies it is, dude.”

~~~

After Stiles left, Derek opened the two file folders he’d found in the safety deposit box.  One was labeled ‘Aiden’, the other labeled ‘Yoli’.  After an hour of pouring through Aiden’s file for any clues, he had a much better idea of what needed to be done, and only a few lingering questions.  He only needed to look at Yoli’s for a minute, however, before jumping up and running to find Stiles, seething.


	6. Chapter 6

Derek doesn’t quite make it to Stiles, because Boyd and Cora have a more pressing issue for their alpha.  They call and tell him to meet them at the hospital immediately.  He makes a U-turn and heads for the crisis of the day as the betas make another call to Scott.

“Are you still at your mom’s house?”

“Yeah, why?”  He looks at Stiles with concern.

“You need to keep her there, she’s in danger.”  Stiles yanks the phone closer.

“Scott’s on his way,” he interjects.  “I’ll keep an eye on her here.”  Scott retakes control of his phone and jumps up, dialing Allison to have her and Peter come to the house for back-up as he and Ethan get on their bikes.  Stiles sets about securing the house, then goes upstairs and fills Melissa in on the situation.

“It’s Aiden, isn’t it,” she asks, though already suspecting the answer.

“Probably.  Don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to you, I swear.”

 

~~~

When Allison and Peter arrive ten minutes later, it’s probably the least stressful of the reunions he’s had so far.  He smiles weakly at Allison and nods at Peter, who says something snarky about letting the kids play while he heads up to see Melissa.

They sit at the dining room table and make awkward small talk for a bit, before Stiles finally decides to get it over with.

“I uhh… I never thanked you for the gun.  Clearly it came in handy, so… thanks.”

“No problem.  Not gonna lie, my dad was convinced you were going to become a hunter after the way you kicked her ass, but I’m glad you got out, even if only for a little.”

“Yeah, me too.”  She stays quiet for a bit.  “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

“Do I even wanna know the details?  Look, it’s your life.  I mean, let’s be honest, is anyone surprised?  With the amount you know, if you weren’t gonna be a hunter you were probably gonna be a wolf.  I dunno, I guess, I always hoped you’d be the one who got out, that you could just leave all of this behind and start over.  I tried and I couldn’t, and… it was nice to think that you were off living your dreams werewolf-free.”

“It’s never over, Allison,” he counters sympathetically.  “There’s no way out once you know.  But you know what?  I’m actually glad it happened.  I have an amazing pack that I love to pieces and that actually appreciates me.  They need me, and more importantly they _want_ me around.  In the back of my head, I think a part of me thought I was better than Scott and Derek and them while I was here because I knew what was going on and chose to be human.  But when it happened, I realized that Peter was right.  I _did_ want the bite.  It was just, inevitable.”

“Aww, Stiles, I’m flattered!”  Peter practically sings from the staircase.

“Yeah, well don’t get used to it, you’re still a creepy bastard,” he responds with no bite.

“Now, what could you possibly be annoyed at me for?  _I_ never implied you were useless.  In fact, didn’t I tell you six years ago that you would make an excellent wolf?”

“Congratulations, would you like an award?”

“What I’d like is for you to relax, at the very least around me.  I mean, I can understand why a hunter would make you nervous, and Lord knows my fellow Beacon Hills wolves are a little dense, but I don’t want anything from you.  I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I genuinely want you to be happy.”

“Well, I am, so…”

“No you’re not.  You’re certainly not miserable, unlike last time I saw you, but you’re a long way from happy.”

“How’s that?”  Peter doesn’t answer right away.  He moves into the dining room and sits across the table from Stiles next to Allison.

“He misses you.”

“Who, Scott?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Stiles.”

“Peter, drop it,” Allison snaps, trying to intervene.

“I’m just saying, you were never useless.  I’m offended for you that it took them as long as it did to figure that out, because by the time they realized just how much pack you really were, you were long gone.”

The expression on Stiles face is unreadable, probably because he’s not even sure what he’s feeling.  It always bothers him when Peter tells the truth, because there’s always an angle.  What’s scary is that this time, Stiles isn’t sure there _is_ an angle at all.

“You’re a good kid, Stiles.  And I’m glad you found a pack that actually understands your worth.  But you also left a pack broken, and I would really like to hope that you’re alpha enough to fix it.”

A shocked laugh leaves Stiles throat.  “Are you saying this is all my fault?”

“No.  I’m saying that they may have started it, but you’re the only one emotionally not-constipated enough to end it.”

“He has a point,” Allison admits with a shrug.

“Yeah, I guess he does.  Looks like once again, Stiles Stilinski has to tag along and clean up Scott and Derek’s mess.”

Peter’s smile is creepy as ever, but his words are heartfelt.  “Oh, and for the record?  I absolutely bit the wrong boy in the woods that night.”  Stiles smiles back.

Talking becomes easier between the three.  Melissa comes down when the coast is clear, and after about 45 minutes of catching up and genuine laughter, Stiles and Peter look towards a presence coming up to the door.

“It’s my pack,” Stiles says fondly yet with great trepidation.  He opens the door and welcomes each of them in with a werewolf-caliber hug.

“Pack, this is my mom, Allison, and Peter.  Guys, this is Dimya, Minh, Julie, and Yoli.”  The two groups greet each other awkwardly.  Melissa glances at Stiles with great concern, but Peter looks at Julie with sad amusement.

‘Oh Stiles,’ his inner monologue sighs.  ‘This is not going to end well, is it?’


	7. Chapter 7

Dmitri Lesov was one of those people that should have graduated three years ago but was still only a sophomore.  Everyone Stiles talked to spoke of Dimya either in hushed tones or, if they were stoners, with rave reviews.  They met when Stiles’ first-year roommate made him accompany him on a pot run.  A symbol on a jar in the older man’s bedroom struck him as disturbingly familiar, so after escorting his roommate back to the dorm, he invented a project requiring the library and returned to Dimya’s apartment.

“Changed your mind about starting your own stash?” he chuckled.

“Actually, I was wondering how much a bag of mountain ash would be.  And if you have any wolfsbane.”  A second of surprise, then a knowing grin crept onto Dimya’s face.

“I thought I smelled Argent bullets… come on in!”

They spent over two hours lighting up and swapping stories.  Dimya gave him more answers in one night than Deaton ever hinted at.  As far as the campus went, there used to be a pack border that ran through campus, and Dimya’s apartment was a neutral zone along it.  But the one pack left suddenly three years previous, and everyone in the other pack had just graduated.

“Wait a minute, what was the name of the pack that left?”

“Hale.  Why, you know ‘em?”  Stiles cackled at that.

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“I heard they were from California,”

“Yep.  Beacon Hills.  Laura’s dead and Derek’s married, in case you’re curious.”

“Wow.  All that in three years?”

“Dude, that’s the short version.”

Late that night, Stiles left with a bag of mountain ash, a wolfsbane flower in a pot, a charm around his neck, and assurance that Dimya would teach him the ways of the magician.  Defensively that is; he definitely wanted to stay out of any supernatural drama for a while.

 

~~~

Of course, that wasn’t really ever an option for Stiles.

The second week of that first year’s spring semester, he gets a call from Dimya.  “Hey, so, I know you’re trying to stay out of it, but I kinda need your help with a wolf bite.  He’s not looking too good.”  Stiles closes his eyes, knowing he’d said yes the moment he met his stoner Yoda.

The victim, Minh, is a first-year in his Intro to World Mythologies class.  He makes nerd chic seem like a real thing and is almost as snarktastic as Stiles, which he appreciates.  They were more or less friends before Stiles saw him sprawled out on Dimya’s coffee table, so if he didn’t feel a need to fix him before, he feels it now.

“What happened?”

“Looks like he was attacked before he was bitten.  The wounds aren’t deep but they could be life-threatening, and if he rejects the bite, he could be screwed anyway.”

“We’ll worry about that later.  How do we stabilize him?”

“I have something that can help us, but I’ll need your energy to help activate it.”

Stiles is finally starting to understand what Deaton meant by him being a spark.  Minh makes it through and becomes a werewolf.  With help from Dimya, Stiles is able to track the one that bit him.  The ensuing fight, however, ends the way he had hoped it never would: he gets bitten.

When he comes to, Dimya is watching him with sympathetic eyes.  “Here, drink this.”  It tastes like cigarettes mixed with sour cream and bile, but he feels calmer and more focused.  He’s on the same coffee table Minh occupied not a month before, while his newest shapeshifting friend is passed out on the couch.  “Guess you’re stuck in it now, huh…”

“Yeah,” Stiles coughs.  “Yeah, I guess I am.  Shocker.”

“For whatever it’s worth, I think you’re gonna make a BAMF werewolf.”

“You know it!” Minh yawns as he forces himself upright.  “If anyone’s over-qualified to become a wolf, it’s you.  You’ve put in all the hours, you might as well get the perks too.”

Stiles melts a bit at the help of his friends.  It’s weird to think of them like that, to think that over the past month he’s become so invested in these two’s lives.  He should be scared of a repeat of home, but of course, this actually makes him more invested.  It might have something to do with the fact that they genuinely seem to care about him back.

It makes becoming a werewolf that much less scary.

 

~~~

The hardest part, he found, was not adjusting to the shift or finding an anchor or using his senses.  The hardest part was agonizing over what to tell Julie.  They’d been together for over six months by that point, and he was positive that this was what love is supposed to feel like.  But like it or not, this could be a deal-breaker, and sooner or later it _would_ come out.  Period.

He had so many models of werewolf-human relationships that it actually confused him more.  Maybe they’re this side of the universe’s OTP, like Scott and Allison are back home.  Maybe she’s secretly being controlled by a wolf whom she’ll resurrect and— yeah okay, that’s probably just a onetime thing. Best case, she just shrugs and moves on, and in fact claims that Stiles too is a minority discriminated against by the politics of the closet in a speciesist society (Danny might have ignored Stiles like it was his religion, but he _was_ still the outcast’s favourite for how he handled Ethan).  Worst case, she burns his family alive.

It ends up being a little less Argent Family Tragedy and a little more Typical Ridiculous Stiles.  He brings her to Dimya’s apartment and stops her at the door.

“Before we go in, I want you to know that you are the first person I’m ever going to tell about this, and I know it might be alarming but I would never hurt you.  We’ve all got our pasts, right?  Well, I think it’s time you saw a glimpse of mine.”

He opens the door to find Dimya and Minh hooking up on the dining room table.

“OH MY GOD, HOLD THAT THOUGHT!” he shouts as he slams the door back shut.

“Wow, umm… so you’re… poly?  That’s cool, I guess,” she says, trying to be open-minded.

“NO. That’s not what that— can we just…  Minh can you and Dimya put some clothes on?  I’m trying to come out to my girlfriend as a furry monster and you’re giving her the not-helpful porn version of that.”

“SORRY DUDE,” Minh calls while Julie just looks _lost_.

“Uhh… I don’t think he can hear you from here…”

“Don’t worry, he heard me.  We’ve got really good hearing.  Which is part of what we need to talk about if these two will _put some damn clothes on_.”

After a few seconds, Minh gives him the all-clear and they enter the apartment to two Fire-Engine Red men seated awkwardly far apart on the couch.  Oh, and Minh’s still wolfed out.  Oops.

“What is wrong with Minh’s face?!?!” Julie nearly screams.  She’s panicking and it’s not good.

“Really, Minh?  You couldn’t ease her into it?”

“You said you were coming in an hour!  I can’t shift back that fast yet!”

“I said that an hour ago!”

“His eyes!  Stiles, why are his eyes glowing?!”

“HEY.” Dimya booms.  All fall silent.  He calmly gets up, takes out some pot, rolls it, and hands it to Julie.  “Trust me, you’ll need it.  It’s complimentary; just smoke and relax, while Stiles explains what the fuck is going on.  Can you do that for me?”  Julie nods, takes a _DEEP_ puff, and exhales.

“Alright,” Stiles attempts, shaking with anxiety, which is apparently not a healing concern for his body.  “You wanna know why Minh’s face is like that?”

“Yes, please.”

“He’s a werewolf.  Like me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just, watch.”  Stiles tries to shift only partially, and somehow succeeds in only letting out claws, teeth and eyes for a few seconds before retracting them.

“Oh, right.  You mean like, actual werewolves.”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”  That’s all she contributes for at least ten minutes, the silence sitting pregnant on everyone’s shoulders before she births that awkward conversation with a slew of questions.  Most pressing:

“So, you’re not proposing a foursome with Minh and Dimya.”

“No,” assures Stiles as Dimya counters “Yes.”  Stiles glares.

“We’ll talk about it later,” is Dimya’s compromise.

 

~~~

With Julie on board, all that ends up being left is to find the wolf that bit them again and take him out.  They know his name is Stan, and that he’s a lone alpha in town looking for a pack.  They track him to a random wooded area in the middle of campus at the bottom of a ravine.

“It’s like this patch of forest was put here specifically for wolves to get angsty in,” Stiles comments.

“It was part of the border treaty.”  Dimya confirms without irony.

“Excellent,” Stan calls to the men he’s turned.  “I don’t even have to go out and find things for you to hunt.”

“Nope,” Stiles agrees.  “We found it all on our own.  Why don’t you be a dear and bear your throat so I can slash it.”

“Cute!  Stiles, right?  I like your style.”

“That’s pretty punny,” Minh interjects dryly.  “Now let’s quit stalling and finish this, please.  I have a paper due tomorrow.”

“Very well,” Stan sneers.  “But it seems we’ve got some extra prey.”  The extra heartbeat Stiles hears is explained when he drags a girl from behind a large tree.

“Let her go.”

“Gladly.  Do you want her, or is she more Minh’s type?”  Before Stiles can stop him, Minh is charging Stan, who carelessly slashes at her throat before taking off.  Minh and Stiles pursue him while Dimya and Julie attend to the girl’s quickly fading life.

“Alright, we need to stop the bleeding.  Rub that into the wound, quickly!”  He begins chanting as Julie begins rubbing.  It doesn’t stop her from bleeding out, but it slows it down.  “You’re doing great, Julie.”

“What do we do now?  She can’t stay like this!”

“There’s not much we can do but wait.  Unless you know of a way to reverse the rupture of her trachea, she’s fucked.”

A howl pierces the chilly March air.  Two minutes later, they hear twin poundings of running feet.  Minh stops a few feet away to take in the scene.  Stiles runs straight up to the girl.

“Move aside,” he commands, and for some reason, Julie instinctively listens.  Looking back on this day, she knows it’s because she can see that his eyes are now red.  He shifts as he lifts her shirt, and bites down on her stomach.  He sits back, tears coming freely.  “She’s safe now.”

 

~~~

Julie and Dimya’s efforts in combination with the effects of the bite make the girl well.  When she awakes, they find out that her name is Yoli, a sophomore computer science major.  Yoli finds out that she’s a werewolf.

The emotional healing process for these five takes the rest of the semester, but by its end, they are a pack: Stiles, their wise alpha; Dimya, the token human; Minh, the second-in-command; Yoli, the baby; and Julie, having taken the bite after finals week, the all-important position of alpha-challenger.

It’s the closest any of them has come to family in a long time.


	8. Chapter 8

Peter’s assessment that things would not be pretty proves to be extremely accurate.

Derek had called Peter and let him know that Aiden fled the premises when he knew his plan to abduct Melissa was discovered.  Cora is tracking him when Derek and Boyd arrive to find a considerably larger amount of werewolves than expected.

They approach the building fully shifted, no matter that the entire neighborhood might see them.  “Fuck, hold on,” they hear Stiles plead from inside the house before they rip the door open.  Stiles stands before them, apologetic but clearly ready to stand his ground in case Derek decides to bite now, ask questions later.

“Derek, calm down.  My pack is here by my request.  I didn’t have time to tell you, but I think you’ll allow—“

“You think you can just waltz back into our lives with a foreign pack of wolves?  Fuck you.  Take your pack and leave immediately or we will fight you.”

“Derek, listen to him,” Peter warns.

“Stay out of this,” Derek spits, one second away from running claws through every living creature in the house.

“Right,” Stiles agrees.  “Just you and me, Derek, okay?  Let’s settle this civilly in private.  Please?”  The look isn’t argumentative or sarcastic, or even particularly sympathetic.  It’s just, calm.  It catches Derek off-guard.  Did he seriously just think of Stiles as calm?

“Fine.  You, me, and Scott”— Scott, who had arrived with Ethan not ten minutes before, looks up in fear— “out back.  NOW.”  He storms around to the backyard followed by the former Dynamic Duo.  Stiles gets eerie flashbacks to the last time something like this happened.

“How dare you bring another pack onto our territory without our knowledge or permission,” Derek whispers icily.  “You never change, do you?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think—“

“No, of course you didn’t!”

“Derek, I’ve been a wolf for a year and a half.  You’ve been one your whole life.  I don’t exactly know the proper protocol as well as you do!”

“YOU TELL ME, DUMBASS.  You were the one who taught us that communication would make or break our pack.  And yet you failed to mention that you called for back-up on hostile territory?  Sends a pretty strong message don’t you think?  Especially now that I know about Yoli.”

“Wait, what?” Stiles puzzles, the connection between the two statements lost in the translation from Sourwolf to Stilinskian.

Scott, who knows as little as Stiles does, tries to intervene.  “Derek, I think you should—“

“Oh sure, Scott, defend the traitor—“

“Traitor?!  What the fuck are you talking about?!?!”

“You ‘re fucking insane, you know that?  You made this big stink about leaving the pack because your little feelings were hurt, then you spent all this time trying to prove how much we need you?!”

“Excuse me?”  Stiles is irate, and only the knowledge that shifting would get someone killed keeps him in human form.  And suddenly, he’s back in high school again, back to that day.  Derek is pissed at him for some bullshit reason he doesn’t understand, Scott is just standing there not doing anything, and Stiles almost gives up like he did five years ago.

 

~~~

It was just a mundane argument like any other.  The only distinguishing factor was that for some reason unclear to Stiles, his English teacher was present.  Stiles had just come from the Mot-hell and his 4-for-4 werewolf rescue rate a few hours ago, when Scott got called to meet with Derek.  Naturally, Stiles tagged along.  When they arrived, Derek was standing behind his war table, Boyd, Isaac, Cora, and Peter around it.  Ms. Blake sat primly on the couch nearby.

“Ms. Blake?  What are you doing here?”  Stiles shoots Scott a dramatically confused face, one that is more or less echoed in the wolf’s.

“Stiles?  Scott?”  Ms. Blake is also taken off-guard, but less so than the two teens.  At this point, she’s come to expect odd happenings as far as Derek is concerned.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, remind me what the Hell humans are doing here?”  Cora’s distrust of strangers is understandable, but the Resting Bitch Face seemingly characteristic of the Hale family makes Stiles a little defensive.

“Stiles is with Scott, and Ms. Blake is with me.”

Stiles scoffs a bit at that.  “That’s it?  My introduction is ‘he’s with Scott?’  Well, don’t I feel special.”

Derek grunts and ignores Stiles’ comment.  He seems more tense than usual, which is saying something when it comes to the arguable inventor of the brood.  Stiles only notices because the past few months, Derek had seemed to be calming down, opening up.  He caught more and more smug and amused looks being thrown his way as he helped Derek move into his loft, which the voluntarily-homeless man only bought at Stiles’ suggestion in the first place.

“Scott, if you don’t mind?”  Derek grumbles acerbically.  Scott joins the table, while Stiles just stares in disbelief.  The message is clear: stay the hell out of it.  Well, fuck that.

“We managed to kill one of them, so we’re down to four targets.  They’re weakened and confused.  The time to strike is now.”

“Uhh, false!” Stiles argues.  “Or did you forget we tried that already?  Sure they’re down an alpha, but that’s still three more than we have, and oh right, the only wolf that hasn’t had a near-death experience this week is Peter.  They’re not the only ones who need time to recover.”

“Who the fuck asked you?!” Cora barks.  “You’re not even pack, what are you doing here?”

“Cora,” Derek warns without conviction.

“Saving your werewolf asses, like always.  If anything, I should be asking what _you’re_ doing here!”

‘Oh shit,’ he thinks a second later.  That was the absolute wrong thing to say, and he knows it.

“STILES.”  Derek roars.  “Shut the fuck up and sit down or get out!”

It’s less than Stiles deserves for hitting below the belt, but the sheer level of ‘I fucking hate you’ pouring off of Derek makes him genuinely scared for the second time in 24 hours.  He changes tactics immediately.  “Sorry, that was out of line, and I apologize.”  He nods to Cora, who’s one hand flail away from shifting and giving him a beat down.  “I just think we’re going about this all wrong.  This isn’t the 1700s; you’re not going to win by having Epic Showdown after Epic Showdown, especially when they’re playing guerrilla warfare.  Instead of letting them divide and conquer, like they’ve been doing since they got here, we need to get our shit together and come up with a way to return the favour.”

“Uhh… ‘we’ aren’t doing anything,” Cora counters.  “ _You_ are going home to your mommy and letting the rest of us whose business this is get shit done.”

“I don’t have a mom.” He deadpans.  He can tell he’s about to start crying in frustration, but somehow he doesn’t really care as he turns back to Derek and forges on with his plan.  “I think it’s time we start beating them at their own game.  The only way that’s going to work is if we start getting along and using our heads.  So let’s stop trying to invade Switzerland and take out the Darach.”

“There’s a Darach?” Peter asks, genuinely interested.

“Duh…?” Stiles whips around to Scott.  “Didn’t you tell them?”

“I uhh… forgot.”

“Stiles,” Derek takes over.  “I don’t have time to fuck around.”

“Well it’s fucking around with us.  It tried to kill Scott AND Isaac AND Boyd tonight, and I can bet you anything it’s working with the alphas.”

“It also tried to kill Ethan,” Boyd supplies.

“Yeah, well my money’s on Deucalion, and we all know his value for his pack’s life is pretty low.  If we can figure out a way to stop him, then we can finally stop the rampant murders around town, and you get your alpha pack taken care of.”

“Thank you Stiles, that’s enough.”  Derek still isn’t looking at him, and it gives Stiles a _really_ bad feeling.  “You can go now.”  Oh.  That’s why.

“…what?”

“I said you can go now.  We have plans to make.”

“But, I just—“

“God,” Cora butts in.  “Can’t you take a hint?  No one fucking wants you here!  You really think anyone gives a shit about you and your schemes and your theories?  You’re. Not. Pack.  You’re here because we need Scott and he’s too passive-aggressive to leave you at home.  So just do everyone a favour and leave us the fuck alone!”

Stiles blinks.  He blinks again.  He’s sure every wolf in this place can hear his heart rate is through the roof, but from where he’s standing, he’s not sure it’s beating at all.  He scans the room slowly.  Cora is angsty as always.  Boyd and Isaac are blank.  Peter looks shocked but his lips are tightly sealed.  Scott looks like he’s about to throw up.  Derek is doing his damnedest to stay out of this.  Ms. Blake is… smirking.  Huh.  And looking at Derek with the same eyes with which Stiles looked at the alpha not three weeks ago when he shared his bed.  Huh.

After a few more seconds, he dares to ask.  “Derek?”

“Goodbye, Stiles.”

Stiles drops his head.  He takes out the key he’d had made to the loft, and throws it to Derek, knowing he’ll catch it.  “C’mon Scott, I think we’re done here.”  He moves towards the door.  Scott doesn’t.

“Stiles, I…” 

Stiles freezes and lets out what might be called a gasp, though with a hint of a whimper.  He chokes a bit, having forgotten to breath, then manages, “oh.  Right.  Sorry, I… umm… right.”

He calmly walks out of the loft and out of the fight for good.


	9. Chapter 9

“Excuse me?”  Stiles is irate, and only the knowledge that shifting would get someone killed keeps him in human form.  And suddenly, he’s back in high school again, back to that day.  Derek is pissed at him for some bullshit reason he doesn’t understand, Scott just standing there not doing anything, and Stiles almost gives up like he did five years ago.  But the time for them all to face the truth is long overdue, so he hits Derek where it hurts.  “I can’t leave a pack I was never in, Derek.  I was just a brat with a crush, remember?”

It’s downright ugly, the fight that ensues.  An alpha’d-out Derek lunges at Stiles, who dodges, then shifts himself.  Scott roars for them both to knock it off, but it’s no use.  Stiles has learned a lot back east about how to fight, and it shows.  He may not be a match for a rampaging Derek, but he does give the older wolf a run for his money.

"I never" swipe and miss "should have let you" uppercut "near my pack!"

"You wouldn't have a pack" foot to the kidneys "if I didn't save their asses weekly!" Right hook.

Lunge and toss.  Stiles lands in a tree back first.  "We've done just fine without you."

Lie.  That was a lie.  And all three alphas heard it loud and clear.

Scott takes the silence in this revelation's wake as an opportunity to try and force his allies back into Pandora's box.  "Don’t you guys get it?  We're all hurt.  We should never have let what happened happen, but we did, and we all hate the consequences.  But guys, you have to grow up.  You two were best friends," that last word comes out lumpy in Scott's throat, an acknowledgement of his own role in what happened.  "You guys are like night and day, and yet you just... _got_ each other.  That's not something you can fake, not something that can be just in your head." He looks specifically at Stiles for that one.  Turning to Derek, "and it's not something you can deny, either.  If there was nothing there, neither of you would feel so strongly about it ending.  Maybe that's a sign that it never should have in the first place?”  Derek growls a bit, but more for propriety’s sake than disagreement.

Isaac, graciously, comes outside before Stiles and Derek can get into a full-blown discussion of the landmine-ridden wasteland that is their feelings.  “Uhh, don’t kill me, but this sounds a little off-topic.  Can we please figure out what to do about Aiden?”

Scott smiles at Isaac and nods for him to go back inside.  “We’ll be done in a minute.”  When Isaac leaves, Stiles and Derek are standing about two feet apart facing each other, eyes anywhere but forward.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to Yoli yet.”

“Good, so you haven’t rehearsed your answers.”

“You seriously think I have something to do with this?”

“Yes.”  He looks Stiles in the eyes at this, and no lie is audible.  Stiles sighs.

“Fine, we’ll question her together.  You’re not the only one she’s got to answer to right now.”

 

~~~

It would be a hilarious melodramatic production if it wasn’t such a heartbreaking comment on how far they had to go to become allies again.  When the alphas returned to the house, they found the kitchen cordoned off into mountain ash sectors.  In a row of three sectors sat all the betas (excepting Yoli, who had her own box on the opposite end of the room) organized by pack.  Dimya and Allison had perches set up on either side to keep the peace.  Melissa was as far away from the brawl as possible without leaving the house.  In the center of the room was a line of ash with just an inch of space leaving it open.  Dimya escorted Stiles to the far alpha pen and sealed the ring, then evacuated Scott and Derek’s pen and locked them in as well.

“Alright, ground rules,” Allison takes over.  “Dimya and I will be arbitrating.  Keep it clean, or we’ll take action.  Betas are to remain silent unless obtaining permission to speak from their alpha.  Alphas, you may either ask a question, or answer a question.  No speeches, accusations, or speculations unless asked, and no antagonizing.  We don’t have time to waste, and we’ve already wasted enough having to go through this charade, so let’s handle this like adults for once.  Scott, since it’s both your territory and your mom’s house, you can go first.”

Scott nods with a smile to his girlfriend, then turns to the foreign beta.  “Hi, Yoli.  Short for Yolanda, right?”  Yoli nods.  “My abuela’s name was Yolanda.  Where are you from?”

“Scott,” Derek breaks in, annoyed with the whole situation.  “Do you wanna just see her police file instead of asking all these pointless questions?”

Stiles jumps in.  “There’s a police file?”

“Yes,” Derek says.  “Allison, could you grab the folder marked ‘Yoli’ from the coffee table?”  Allison moves to get it as Derek explains further.  “The Sheriff’s safety deposit box contained two folders, labeled ‘Aiden’ and ‘Yoli’.  The picture in the file matches that girl over there.”  The alphas pass the file around, with some assistance of course.

“Yoli,” Stiles starts.  “How did you know my dad?”

“He arrested me over the summer.”

Stiles’ eyes go wide.  “You were here?  Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“I didn’t know this was your hometown until I saw your dad’s nametag.”

“Then why were you here?”  The question is Derek’s but Stiles is just as curious.

Yoli is _not_ comfortable.  “…Aiden asked me to come.”

Chaos.  The Hale-McCall betas start snarling.  Scott furrows his brow in confusion as Derek sets his jaw.  But for Stiles, the realization that this isn’t all just a big misunderstanding makes him start to panic.  He looks at Yoli with utter hurt.  It makes her squirm in her box.

A deafening screech pierces the din of the kitchen.  Every wolf looks to Dimya and his dog whistle with contempt.  “Thank you.  Let’s proceed.”

Scott takes over quickly to try and avoid any more outbursts.  “How do you know Aiden?”

“If I may?”  The request is Ethan’s.  Scott acknowledges him.  “Yoli went to high school with us before we moved here with Deucalion.  They were really good friends until then.”

“Do you know where he is now?” Derek asks with urgency.

“No,” she answers.  “I don’t.  Last I saw him was the night I was arrested.”

“Which was August,” adds Stiles, examining his dad’s report.  “Now, my dad had a system; normal police files stayed at the office, supernatural files stayed at the house.  Why were yours and Aiden’s kept somewhere completely different?”

“Keep reading,” advises Derek.  “I’d guess it was because of what you’ll find in her supernatural file.  You’re a programmer, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Which is how you hacked into our werewolf perimeter.”

“…yeah.”

“bitch…” Danny curses under his breath.  Allison glares but rolls her eyes at his sheepish glance.

“But I didn’t know that’s what it was.  I got an email from him asking me to come to California and help him with a project, so I came.  He needed into a system— didn’t say why— just that we had to be out in the woods to do it.  Once I’d hacked it, he said a rushed thanks and ran off.  Two hours later, your dad’s arresting me for a bogus B&E charge.  I think Aiden set me up.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me any of this for four months?”

“I didn’t think you wanted to talk about it.”

“You met my dad!  You compromised another pack’s territory!”

“I didn’t know that until later!”

“But you still didn’t say anything?!”

“Because every time one of us brings up this fucking town you change the topic!  You don’t wanna talk about it, Stiles!  Don’t you find it odd that your dad didn’t say anything about it either?  To anyone?  I don’t think he was hiding the files just to keep Aiden from getting to them.  I think he wanted to protect you because you’d be too stubborn to face the packs yourself and they’d just think the worst.”  The room is frozen.    Stiles looks like she’d physically slapped him.  “Stiles, you’re a great alpha and I love you, but you’ve got baggage— you all do— and if you had just let us help you with it, this could all have been avoided.  I don’t blame you for that, at all, but from what I can tell, he used that to his advantage.”

“What do you mean?”

“Aiden’s clearly been planning this for years.  He knows all of your strengths and weaknesses, and clearly the biggest pressure point for the pack that took down the alphas is the feud between the McCall-Hales and the Stilinskis.  If I were him, all I’d need to do to have you take each other out would be to get you here by yourself to stir trouble with the Hale-McCalls.  Then when your pack gets here, it’s a sign of aggression, especially since someone in your pack was already a part of it.”

“I feel violated,” Scott quips.

“Tell me about it…” Yoli adds, emotionally exhausted.

“I’m sorry.”  Derek doesn’t realize until a few seconds later that Stiles was directing that at him, eyes firm yet sincere.

“Yeah, me too,” he offers.

“So now what?”

 

~~~

When Jennifer hears the front door unlock, she assumes it’s her husband returning from yet another scene with Stiles.  She tenses a bit, but doesn’t take her eyes off of the sobbing baby in her arms, only coos.  “It’s okay, Eric.  Hear that?  Daddy’s home.”  She feels smooth hands reach around and land on her cheeks.

It’s not daddy.


	10. Chapter 10

“Something about this is bothering me,” Isaac muses aloud once the ash lines have been broken and tasks have been assigned.  Isaac, Ethan, Scott, and Allison took Minh with them to track down Aiden while Derek took the Hales and Boyd to discuss privately what to do about the Stilinski pack.  Stiles, meanwhile, was keeping guard of Melissa with Julie while Dimya, Yoli, and Danny figured out how to get the perimeter working again, as well as a way to track where in the forest the intruder is.  “I mean, what was his plan at the hospital?  He got there God knows when, led us to him with his scent, then as soon as we showed up left without a trace.  What gives?”

Ethan stops dead in his tracks.  “Double vision.”

“What?”

“Whenever we needed something done stealthily or needed an alibi, the two of us would split up.  One of us would go to one location as the decoy while the other did what needed done.”

“So Melissa wasn’t the target…”

“Think about it,” Ethan explains, already jogging back to the Stilinski house.  “What other human do we have in the pack that can’t protect herself?”

“Jennifer.”

“We need to warn Derek.”

“You keep looking, I’ll send the message.” 

Ethan gets to the backyard and finds Derek.  “Melissa was the decoy, he’s after Jennifer.”

Derek stills in sudden realization.  She’d been alone for _hours_ with a rogue alpha on the loose.  He’d left his human wife and baby to fend for themselves without even _considering_ sending someone to look after them.  “No…”  He sprints home, his pack barely keeping up with their frantic alpha.  He finds the door unlocked, and in the pit of his stomach, he knows he’s done it again.  He’s gotten his family killed _again_.  “Jenny, no.”

Jennifer’s body lies by the playpen, neck snapped.  Eric is nowhere to be found.  The room reeks of Aiden.

Derek’s roar can be heard all the way from the Stilinski home.  It strikes sadness into every heart who hears it.  Stiles gets nauseous at the implications and instinctively knows that he needs to act now.

“I… have to…”

“Go,” Julie says, placing a hand on her boyfriend’s knee.  “He needs you.  We’ve got it covered here.”

Stiles makes it to the Hale house in almost the record time Derek did.  He stops in the doorway, watching Derek cradle her in his arms, staring off into space.  He decides it’s better to ask Peter.

“She’s…”

“Yeah.”

“And the baby?”

Derek’s head pops up and looks at Stiles in incredulity.  The baby.  “He’s still alive.  I can feel him.”

“We’ll find him, Derek,” Stiles says with conviction.  “I swear to God we’ll find him.”

Derek nods, somewhat comforted by Stiles’ complete trust that this was fact.  He returns Jennifer’s head gently to the ground and kisses her forehead.  When he stands up, his eyes are red, from tears and from shifting.  Stiles takes his lead, and the six wolves charge into the night, on the lookout for a baby to rescue and an alpha to maim.

 

~~~

About 10 minutes later, they catch up with the McCall search party and compare notes.  Scott puts a hand on Derek’s shoulder when the grieving husband says the words.  It warms Stiles’ heart a bit that Derek has become much more responsive to touch over the years, and to Scott.

There are traps all over the woods.  Stiles manages to save Boyd from being impaled on a stake of mountain ash.  Boyd bows his head at Stiles, who bows his in return.  That’s about as close as the two have ever been, which is as simple a reconciliation as Stiles could hope to get.

Danny of all people calls Stiles a few minutes later.  “Hey, we got the system back up and running.  You and Minh are the only ones I can see.  We have to wait until Aiden starts moving before we can track him.”

“Thanks Danny, you always were my favourite.”  He can imagine Danny rolling his eyes, and he wouldn’t be wrong.

“Not a chance, Stilinski,” but the smile behind it is audible.  Just like old times.  “We’ll let you know when we find something.”

They decide to split up to speed up the process, and make it more difficult to trap the whole search party.  Allison takes to the roads and drives around the city searching for disturbances or places they might be hiding.  The Hales canvas the area around Derek’s house.  Ethan takes Isaac and Boyd to a potential hideout he vaguely remembers, leaving Stiles, Scott, and Isaac to cover the forest in between.

After a few minutes of sniffing around, Scott puts his hand on Stiles’ shoulder.  “Hey, I just, I wanted to say I’m sorry.  About that night.  I should have stuck up for you.”

“Yeah, well… at least I was right!”

Scott laughs.  “Yeah, as always.”  His face changes to something more serious and he stops.  “But seriously, you’re my brother— literally now— and I betrayed you.  I’m sorry.”

“Good.  You should be.” Stiles says matter-of-factly.

“How are you not tearing my head off right now?”

“I’m not mad at you, Scott.  I spent a long time being mad, but it didn’t really help anything.  I was more done than anything.  I mean, I had just talked you out of killing yourself literally hours before, and you still left me in the dust.  You ditched me for Allison, then for Isaac here, then for Derek of all people.  Three’s a pattern, remember?  So I just stopped trying to hold onto someone who didn’t care whether or not Gerard was torturing me in a basement— okay, I’m still a _little_ mad about that one.  You seriously didn’t even consider the possibility that me being missing was important?”

“I’m sorry.”

Stiles lets out a huff.  “I know.  You’re a fucking idiot, but I forgive you.”

Scott smiles weakly.  Stiles could light into him for hours if he wanted, but he can tell by the look in Scott’s eyes that he doesn’t need to.  Scott may be oblivious, but once he gets something he gets it completely.  “So we’re good?”

“Personally?  Yeah, dude we’re good.  I wouldn’t trust you with anything more important than my favourite pencil because I know for a fact you’ll betray me again, but you’re still my brother.”

Stiles goes to keep hunting for clues but Isaac stops him.  “What about me?”

“What about you?”

“You’re not going to apologize for leaving us to fend for ourselves?”

Stiles lets out an incredulous scoff.  “Uhh… no?  Why the hell would I do that?”

“You turned your back on pack.”

“THEY TURNED ON ME FIRST!  Alright, you want to hear the pissed-off version of this conversation?  Fine.  I don’t recall you, or Scott, or Derek, or even fucking Peter standing up for me.  No one jumped in to say, ‘hey now, he is too pack’ because to everyone involved, I wasn’t.  You’re seriously gonna stand here and tell me that I turned my back on you guys?  I gave you what you wanted; I shut up and left it alone.  You didn’t seem too upset about it back in high school; why are you so pissed about it now?”

“Because we were wrong, okay?”  Isaac is crying angry tears, and it’s not what Stiles expected from him.  This entire conversation is unexpected.  The Isaac he knew would have been completely indifferent whether Stiles was alive or dead.  “We were wrong and you know it.  You’ve always known it!  That’s why you left, isn’t it?  To show us just how much we really needed you?”

Stiles raises his eyebrows and chooses his words carefully.  “I think you all demonstrated that for yourselves.  I’m sorry you all only tolerate each other now instead of the way things use to be, but you’re not going to blame me for this because it’s not my fault.  You made your beds, I just let you lie in them.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a baby to rescue.”  He takes off at a slow run, the other wolves following him.

“Alright, well since Scott’s clearly not going to say it, I might as well tell you that we could smell Derek on you.  He wasn’t the only one being distant.”

Stiles doesn’t answer for a minute, focusing solely on tracking Eric to avoid _that_ conversation.  “So you knew.”

“Yeah, and we also knew as soon as we got there what Jennifer was doing there.  That’s why I didn’t say anything,” Scott assures.  “Derek was obviously giving you the fuck you, but I couldn’t defend you without getting us both killed, and that just wouldn’t help anyone.”

Stiles stares at the wolves.  “Wow.  Actually, that explains a great deal.”

“Stiles,” Isaac tries.  “I get why you left.  Noted.  But you still left, and to a group of people with abandonment issues?  That’s the worst thing you can do.”

“Yeah, but of everyone, Isaac, I thought you’d be the one to understand the need to get out of an abusive situation.”  Hit.  “This was always gonna end in tears, it was just a matter of whose.”

Isaac averts his eyes.  “I’m sorry.”

“Feeling’s mutual, man,” offers Stiles, who awkwardly puts a hand on Isaac’s shoulder. 

“I never did thank you for saving me from the motel.  So, thanks.”

Stiles gets a smug look across his face, one the two who stayed in Beacon Hills haven’t seen in a long time.  “It’s okay, you little cuddle monster.”  He ruffles Isaac’s hair.  “I get it.”

“I told you never to mention that!”

“Yeah well you owe me.  In fact, all you bitches owe me, and I absolutely plan to collect.”

The three hunt on in a slightly more companionable silence.  It wasn’t like old times, but they would probably argue that that was for the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: the original version of this chapter was much more tame, but a lot of you wanted Stiles to stop being so nice, and once I rewrote it, I absolutely agreed.
> 
> Also, because I know it'll come up eventually, my original impetus for writing this series was to challenge myself to write a _not_ -Sterek fic. Obviously that's really hard for me, but I'm trying to keep that part as open-ended as possible so you could read it either way.


	11. Chapter 11

The three groups end up converging at none other than the old Hale property.  They are exhausted, stressed, and fiercely determined to end this bullshit.  Before Derek can open his mouth to say something terse to the other groups, Stiles gets a call from Yoli.

“Whatcha got for me, Yoli?”

“We got hits, as in more than one.  There’s a whole pack of them, and they’re closing in on your location.”

“How many?”

“I see six dots.”

“How did we miss them?” Ethan asks, mostly to himself, but as with all things, the other wolves heard it and mirrored his confusion.

Dimya comes on the line next.  “I smelled a shit ton of mint earlier, I think they’re masking themselves.”

“Of course,” mutters Stiles.

“We hold our ground,” Derek commands.  All eyes snap to him.

“There’s more,” Yoli adds.  “We think we found Eric.”

“WHERE?”

“There’s a heat signature around your location, but it’s, well, underground.  I didn’t think anything of it until I remembered—“

“The basement,” the Hales say simultaneously.

“Yoli, you’re a rockstar.”  Stiles hangs up and focuses on the task at hand.

“We’ll get Eric, you guys keep the pack at bay,” Cora calls as she and Isaac start to run off.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” Aiden declaims, suddenly visible through the trees.

“Aiden, you son of a bitch, I—“

“Hey now, don’t insult Ethan’s mom like that,” he drawls.  “She was a nice woman.  Too bad we had to slash her throat though, right Ethan?”

“Shut up.”  Ethan spits, blocking out the memories of what they did to their old pack, their family.

“What do you want.”  Stiles seems to have mastered the Derek Hale Question-that-isn’t-a-question.

“Revenge, a little fun, power.  All the good stuff.  I certainly want you three dead,” he lists, indicating the alphas before him.  “Besides, it’s been a while since this forest has seen a good territory dispute.  Although Stiles, I was expecting a three-way battle, not four.  Good for you!”

“Give me my son back and get the fuck out.”  Derek and many of the betas are already shifted.

“Mmm… no.  Once I’ve taken care of these three, the rest of you are welcome to join us.  Or, you know, die.”

“Aren’t you a little outnumbered?”  Stiles mocks.  “I mean, I’ve kind of got a reputation for icing alphas, not to mention our friend Mr. True Alpha over here, and believe me, killing Hales is damn near impossible.  How many times have you died, Peter?”

“About 3…”

“Well, I must admit, the plan was to get you to kill each other.  I’m actually kinda surprised they didn’t shoot you on sight, Stilinski.  I sure as hell would have.”

“Never said they were the smart ones…  Now as much as I love a good evil banter, I’d rather get this over with, so how about you put up or shut up.”

“With pleasure.”

War.  Aiden leaps over the alphas next to his twin and initiates the double werewolf special.  Since Ethan gave up his alpha powers to join Scott’s pack, he is unable to control the merger, leaving Aiden in control of his body.  The betas clash, while the three alphas team up to take down the Goliath.  Scott is a little rusty, but Derek and Stiles establish a teamwork that gets more than a few good licks in.  They hear two foreign betas fall silent, and while the McCall-Hales have them outnumbered, Minh decides to speed things along by rescuing Eric.

“Get Dimya!” Stiles shouts to his beta, landing a punch while a foot connects to his stomach.  Minh calls Dimya, grunts an uncharacteristically short, ‘get here now,’ hangs up, and descends into the basement.

The betas make quick work of the three who remained loyal to Aiden.  Isaac is holding Cora’s insides in to the best of his ability, black making its way through each one of his veins as he tries desperately to make this the tiniest bit easier on his wife.  Peter has long gashes down his arm, and Boyd is missing an eye, but they are relatively stable.

The alphas have mostly been playing defensively.  As much as they want Aiden dead, they refuse to kill him with Ethan still inside.  Suddenly, Derek finds himself impaled on the giant’s claws, but Stiles manages to yank him off before the damage becomes irreversible.  Just as Stiles is about to say ‘fuck it all’ and murder the bastard, Ethan or no Ethan, Dimya runs in at hyperspeed, struggling for air.  “DUCK!”

The wolves hit the deck as Dimya lobs what can only be described as a grenade made of lightning at the double wolf.  The twins are thrown apart from each other, and Scott and Stiles use the opportunity to hold him down.

Stiles kills his third alpha.

 

~~~

Dimya drives the most critically injured— including a stubborn yet bleeding Derek— back to the Stilinski house to get patched up.  Stiles, Scott, Peter, and Ethan run to the basement when Stiles feels his bond with Minh snap.  Something is horribly, horribly wrong.

Blood spatters the entire corridor surrounding the mangled flesh of what once was Minh.  Stiles gasps.  For the life of him, he cannot even consider moving.  All he can do is loop one phrase over and over in his mind.  Minh is dead, and it’s your fault.  Minh is dead, and it’s your fault.

By the time he realizes he’d had a panic attack from which Scott was now talking him down, several minutes have gone by.  Ethan and Peter are working on a way to get to the infant they can sense further along in the bowels of this cursed land.

“Wait,” Stiles shouts.  “That sigil on the wall, it’s a signature mark.  Only Aiden’s DNA will break it.”

Ethan looks at his hand.  “Close enough.”

Stiles nods.  “Trace it backwards.”  Ethan does what Stiles suggests, and suddenly there is a whoosh through the corridors.  Stiles can sense the lessening of magic in that place.  “The coast is clear.”

Behind the iron door, in the middle of the floor is Eric, screaming bloody murder and staring at the four wolves with all of the world’s confusion and pain in his eyes.  After thoroughly searching for more traps, Stiles scoops up the tiniest Hale into his arms and snuggles into him, projecting as much calm and safety and love as he can into this little bundle that has now earned its Hale name through the tragic loss of a family member.

“You’re okay, Eric.  Uncle Stiles has you.  Don’t cry.”  Soon— much sooner than one would expect from a freaked out six-month-old in a stranger’s arms— Eric has stopped crying and is clutching Stiles’ tattered shirt for dear life.  Stiles, though, has just started a fresh set of tears.

“C’mon, big guy.  Let’s get you home.”


	12. Chapter 12

When the Hale house burnt down, there were too few remains to utilize the family plot.  The Sheriff was buried with Stiles’ mother, but while he was finalizing plans to inter Jennifer there, Derek offered Stiles the use of the family plot for Minh.

The packs figured it would be less painful to bury everyone the same day.  The whole town, as well as Stiles’ family from all over, even Lydia and Jackson (in disguise) just off the plane from London, showed up for the Sheriff’s funeral.  Stiles’ face was soaked in salt, but he kept it together throughout the entire service.  He only caught Derek staring at him sympathetically once, a look of understanding from one orphan to another.

A number of students and administrators came to Jennifer’s funeral, as well as her family.  They were a little confused by the rituals that attended this particular service, but Peter explained to those who asked that it was a traditional family custom passed down through the generations.  ‘This is the tame version,’ he thinks to himself in his macabre fashion.  ‘I’d hate to see how you react to a wolf burial.’

When evening came, the three packs, Chris and Allison Argent, Lydia Martin, Jackson Whittemore, and Melissa McCall-Stilinski were the only ones in the cemetery.  To the outside world, this would appear a strange subset of the community, but if these broken people have learned anything these past five years, it’s that this is their family now.

Derek, Peter, and Dimya walked Minh’s alpha through the details of how to set and prepare the body, how to encase and bury it, what words to say and what runes and sigils to apply.  When he was finished, a single wolfsbane flower and tearstained soil were all that marked the resting place of his beta, the boy who got him turned into a wolf in the first place.

There was a lot of howling and a lot of hugging after that.  It was a fucking awful day, but if he’s being honest, this is the most loved Stiles has ever felt.  Lydia had ambushed him with a limb-crushing embrace that ten years ago would have been Boner Central.  They just said they were sorry and laughed tearfully at how silly they’d been, thinking they weren’t ever friends.  At one point, he saw Ethan try to sneak out of the vigil and followed him back to the Hale property, helping him bury Aiden.  The man, no longer a twin, was also no longer an enemy as he extended his hand to Stiles in gratitude before they walked back.  It became harder and harder to draw pack lines, and easier to draw lines of connection, open lines of communication.  This was a community, a network, a coalition of lost and damaged souls that had finally found comfort in each other against a scary world of monsters.

Perhaps the most curious connection made that night was between Stiles and Eric.  Nearly every time the baby was removed from his arms, he would start crying, and every time Stiles’ heart got more and more troubled.  It was like this child was ripping him apart with a single pout, and all he wanted to do was show this little guy that he had a whole world of people who loved him and refused to let him see harm.

“You know why he’s doing that, right?” Derek begins, his son passed out against his chest.  They have to start somewhere.

“No, you know, I’ve actually been kinda wondering that,” Stiles puzzles.  “Shouldn’t you want my head on a platter for even looking at the kid?”

“Stiles, who was the alpha you killed?”

Of all the places this conversation could have gone, _this_ was not on the map.  “Uhh… some batshit loner named Stan, from back at school… which is the same school you… oh god, was he—”

“Tristan Hale was my cousin,” Derek confirms solemnly.

“Holy shit, Derek I swear I didn’t—”  Derek holds up his non-baby hand to stop him.

“I believe you.”

“Wait, now I’m confused.”

“You smell like pack,” Derek explains with reluctant honesty.  “When you took his alpha status, you took his magical lineage, which means you smell like a Hale.  You, Peter, and Cora are the only ones besides me who can calm him down like that.”

“Huh.”  Stiles beams with pride.  “Guess I was right all along; I really am pack.”

Derek shuffles uncomfortably, a thoroughly un-Derek maneuver.  “You always were.  I’m sorry I didn’t see it.”

“Yeah, well, you were right too, I mean—“

Derek looks at him with wild, confused eyes.  “Stiles, I wasn’t right about a damn thing!  You weren’t just pack, you were like, the glue that held us together and that one thing that kept us human.  Without you, we’re just a sniveling bunch of angsty outsiders who work together because it’s convenient, not because we like each other.  We never showed it, but with the exception of Cora we all actually liked you.”

“Yeah, when I was useful, oh and I’m pretty sure Jennifer and I couldn’t stand each other either.”  He puts his hand over his mouth as soon as it’s out, those doe-wide eyes making a comeback.  Derek just smirks sheepishly, wistfully.

“She thought I was cheating on her.”

“Wha… with me?”

“Remember how you couldn’t find your underwear after The Night We Never Talk About?  She found it that day under the bed.  She couldn’t understand why I had Batman underwear until she realized that you were pack, and she just kinda, never wanted to talk about you since.”

“Oh.  You know, that explains so much.”

Something rolls down Derek’s cheek: a tear.  He’s shaking.  “I’m sorry.”

“For which part?”

“All of them?”  Vulnerable Derek will never be his favourite Derek, and his instinct is to make him stop shaking, but if the other alpha thinks he’s going to get away without a lengthy explanation, complete with feelings, he’s got another thing coming.  “You know I’m not good with… I was just…”  He takes a deep breath.  “It’s hard for me to trust people, because of Kate.  You leaving didn’t make it any easier.”

“Yeah, well that’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, don’t you think?  I mean, the more you refuse to trust people, the more you push them away, and eventually they’re gonna leave and you’ll trust them even less.  Not to mention confusing the fuck out of the people who actually care about you.”

“Yeah, I know.  Jenny complained about that too.  You two were actually a lot alike; I think if it wasn’t for me, you and her would have gotten along really well.”

“No, we wouldn’t have,” Stiles confides.  “Like you said, we’re too similar.  If we didn’t clash over you, we’d clash over English Literature, or a fender bender, or some other easily-solved conflict that we’d blow out of proportion.”

“I don’t think you blew this out of proportion.  I fucked you over.”

“Yes, you did.  Royally.  I mean, I was a _little_ melodramatic, but anyway, that’s not the point.  You were groveling?”  Stiles’ attempt at a smile is infectious.  Derek adopts it before continuing, softly.

“I’ve been scared— deathly scared— for a really long time.  When you spend as much of your life as I did hiding from people who want to kill you or the people you care about, you don’t always know when you don’t have to be afraid anymore.  When the two of you met, I freaked, because I didn’t know what I wanted.  And in case you haven’t noticed, that’s when I make stupid decisions that get people hurt.”  Stiles attempts a hand on Derek’s shoulder.  It stays there without incident, but the older man’s voice drops to an urgent whisper, a truth he’s never uttered before reaching other ears.  “I was never supposed to be alpha.  At all.  I took it because I thought I was literally the last person on Earth left who could take it.  I have no fucking clue what I’m doing!  I never have!  I’ve spent the past 11 years flying by the seat of my pants and all it’s given me is a gaping hole in my chest and blood on my hands and I’m done, I’m just… Stiles I’m so tired.  I just want to be done.”

The Derek that’s hugging him right now (baby sandwich!), having just exceeded his yearly word count in two minutes, is so far from the Derek he remembers.  That isn’t such a bad thing.

“Derek, no matter how many times I’ve said things to the contrary, you’re a _great_ alpha.”

“Stiles…”

“You’re doing just fine.  I’m actually pretty proud of you for how far you’ve come since the last time I saw you.”

“You’re still cleaning up my mess.”

“And I’ll clean it again.  It’s what I do, Derek.  That’s what I’ve always been there to do.  You make the tough calls, and I fix the bad ones when we get there.”  Derek is downright sobbing at this point, so he moves them even farther away from the rest of the vigil so that his stupid, broken Sourwolf can ugly cry like a regular person.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Why the fuck do you care so much about people who treat you like shit?  If I was you, I would have slashed all of our throats a long time ago.”

Stiles snorts.  “Trust me, dude, I’ve definitely thought about it.  Several times.  I thought about it this morning, even.”  Derek rolls his eyes.  “I spent a long time hating you, and the pack, and this town, but deep down, what I hated was that I didn’t hate you at all.  Because you guys weren’t even doing it to be malicious.  Well, most of you.  You’re just selfish idiots.  That sucks and we are _definitely_ working on that when this is over, but you’re my selfish idiots and so help me God if I have to come out here again and kick some other trifling werewolf’s ass, you know I will.”  Derek laughs.  A real, live, authentic, laugh.  It’s clear and pure and it makes Stiles _melt_.  Suddenly, Derek backs away and holds out his son.

“Stiles, I want you to hold Eric.”  Confused, Stiles takes the baby, and the familiar lurch in his heart makes him instinctively draw the boy closer.

“You felt it.”

“What… yeah.  Wait, what?”

Derek smiles.  It’s a smile of resignation but also of hope.  “Do you know the other reason he’s been so clingy to you all day?”

“Shit, did I do some magic curse thing on him by accident?”

“In a way.”  Derek swallows down a whine and says what needs to be said.  “He chose you.”

“…for… what…?”

“His alpha.”

He almost drops the baby.

WHAT.

THE.

…WHAT?

“Derek, that’s not funny.”

“It’s not a joke.”  Stiles is making guppy faces in his confusion.  “Sometimes, if it’s in great stress, a baby who will become a werewolf will have its first shift early.  Don’t tell me you can’t feel his wolf pulsing behind his veins.”

“Okay, that makes sense, but how does that make me his alpha?”

“To a great extent, a wolf can choose its alpha, even kids who haven’t yet developed complex decision-making skills.  Normally, a wolf of Eric’s age will choose his parent if she or he is one, but if there’s a more powerful alpha in the family with whom they have a strong connection… it’s rare but it happens.”

Stiles is officially freaked out.  “But… how… why did you let me touch him!  Holy crap I just Stockholmed your baby!”  Derek’s arm around Stiles is a grounding presence.

“It’s fine.  He made the right decision.”

Stiles sputters, “…the fuck did you just say?  I’m sorry, your only child picked a complete stranger over you, and you’re okay with that?”

“Well, he’s certainly a Hale, that’s for sure,” Peter interjects, creeping as always where he shouldn’t be.  Derek flashes his uncle the red eyes, causing the beta to wince slightly.  “I’m just saying, Stiles, you’re the best alpha I’ve seen in a long time.  Eric’s probably not the only one jumping ship, if you’re up for it.  And I don’t only mean me.”  He goes back to the rest of the group, but as always he’s wormed his way into their heads.  Stiles shakes his at the enigmatic thirtysomething that somehow ended up being his friend and returns to the pressing situation at hand.  The look Derek is giving him is hard to read, and unnervingly intimate.

“Derek, what are we doing here?”

“What do you mean.”

“Dude, I’m gonna make you talk about it.  It’s time.  What do you want from me?”  Derek takes a deep breath, and exhales.  He forces himself to say it slowly so he doesn’t make a mistake.

“I want my best friend back.  I want to be part of a pack with you in it.  I want to watch my son grow up with an alpha who will teach him what being a werewolf is really about.  I want to forget the past five years ever happened, because you weren’t just a brat with a crush.  I want to go back to that night and tell you before you leave my bed that even if it never happens again I will never, _ever_ regret sharing that with you because it was the first time in seven years I’d felt at home.”

Stiles didn’t think he had any tears left, but there they were, matching the ones still flowing from the man he’d invested six years in.

“Derek, I… I can’t do this right now.  I need time, and sleep, and… so much processing time right now.”

“I know.  I totally understand.  Just know that I’m never abandoning you again, so if and when you’re ready to say what you need to say, I’ll be here.”  Derek deftly removes his son from Stiles’ arms and peppers a kiss on the baby’s forehead.  As he turns to walk away, Stiles grabs his arm, not forcefully but with intent.

“You’re not making this easy, you know.  I was kinda hoping you’d just send me away again.”

“I tried that once and it made everyone miserable.  Maybe it’s time I tried trusting you instead.”

 

~~~

Stiles doesn’t sleep that night.  Before she turns in for bed herself, Julie kisses him on the lips timidly and says, “it’s okay to want to fix it instead of walking away again.  Even if you have every right to tell them to go fuck themselves.”

His response comes out sounding incredibly teenage-angsty, but it’s the truth.  “If I don’t have my bitterness, then what do I have?”

“Me… Dimya… Yoli… Melissa… the McCall and Hale packs… and of course Derek.”  Stiles stiffens at that.  He _hates_ that Julie’s caught in the middle of his dramafest with Derek, because he really does love her.  She continues, “he’s not asking to be your husband or your boyfriend or your friend or your enemy.  He’s just asking to be the Derek to your Stiles.  And you know you’re gonna let him.”

“Will you?”

“Of course,” she smiles, turning off the lamp on the side table.  “I know pack when I smell it, and the whole lot of them reeked of Stiles when I walked in.  I’m sure I’ll come to love him too, in whatever capacity you need.”

He kisses her again.  “You’re fucking amazing, you know that, right?”

“I mean, I know I told you those were estrogen pills, but they’re actually made of concentrated Awesome.”  They make out for a minute or two before Julie turns over to sleep.  “Sweet ruminations!”

“Night, Julie.”

 

~~~

After the initial five-hour freak-out about what the hell just happened, things actually started falling into place in his head.  He came to the following conclusions:

1) He doesn’t care how difficult it’s gonna be; he fucking loves Eric to pieces and so help him he is going to alpha the shit out of him.

2) This is, was, and always will be his home.  Not Beacon Hills, that certifiable Hellmouth, but this pack.  Scott is his brother, Mrs. McCall-Stilinski his mom, and the rest of these insane wolves and associates are the wacked-out obscure relatives that he wouldn’t trade for all the horizons in the world.

3) This includes his best friend, Derek Hale.  There was a time he was in love with him.  There was a time he hated his very existence.  But no matter how they feel about each other any given week, there will always be Derek and Stiles.

In the morning, Derek calls him and tells him that everyone is on their way to the Stilinski house for some last minute business.  When everyone is accounted for, Derek stands up to speak.  “As some of you know, there have been some necessary changes to the pack structure considering the circumstances.  Eric has decided to claim Stiles as his alpha, and I imagine he’s been accepted.”  Chuckles circulate as everyone’s focus goes to the baby in Stiles’ lap and the sheepish grin on the alpha’s face.  “Cora and Boyd have decided to join the McCall pack, and Scott has welcomed them in.”

“‘Cause you’re a fucking idiot, Derek!” Cora lobs.

“Yeah, and you’re a bitch,” he dishes right back.  “Sit the fuck down.”

She sits the fuck down.

“This next change may come as a shock, but I doubt it.  Alpha Stilinski, if you would accept, I hereby submit myself to you as my alpha.”

Stiles coughs loudly and repeatedly, more than a little taken aback by what Derek has just said.  Having regained control of his trachea, he levels a glance at Derek.  “Are you serious right now?”

“Yes.”

Stiles wants to ask why, but thinking over their conversation last night, it’s actually pretty clear.  “And you’re sure?”

“Do you really think I’m gonna let you just abduct my son?”  To stem off his panic that this is actually happening right now, he looks down at the adorable baby he’s holding.

“Too late, he’s mine MUAHAHAHA!”  Eric giggles along with him.  Stiles looks back at Derek seriously.  “I accept.”  He feels the energy shift in the room as the power structure reconfigures itself.  He can sense Derek even more strongly than before, just like the rest of his pack.  It’s weird, but so completely their everyday weird.

“And if you don’t mind,” Peter cuts in, awkwardly.  “Seeing as I’m technically an omega right now, I’d like you to be my alpha as well.”

“I accept!” Stiles chortles.  “You’re my bitch now, Creeper Wolf!”  Peter blanches at that.

“You wankers are insane,” Jackson lilts, rolling his eyes.

Perhaps, but if true, then they're all just insane enough to make pefect sense together.


	13. Epilogue

Stiles saw this day coming the moment he had to watch Scott and Allison interact for the first time.  The summer after his college graduation is atrociously hot in New York, but in Beacon Hills it’s a little bit more manageable.  Scott and Allison bought the new Hale property from Derek when he moved back to New York with the rest of the Stilinski pack, and today it is lavishly decorated for the wedding that surprises no one.  The entirety of the pack, as well as some random friends and coworkers of the happy couple— not to mention a menacingly large contingent of hunters— is waiting for the ceremony to start.  The hunters and the wolves kindly stay on separate sides of the isle.  In the front row Danny and Ethan, who are themselves now engaged, keep Melissa company as she stares at her baby waiting at the altar patiently for his One True Love.  The rest of Scott’s pack fills the front row and is either chatting amongst itself or turned around to talk to the Stilinski pack behind them.  Isaac and Cora are playing babysitter to an energetic Eric, whose new favourite word— to his alpha’s infinite amusement— is ‘Sawoof’.  Stiles is currently standing next to Lydia on the bride’s side in a heated argument with her about whether the bestiary should remain in Archaic Latin or be translated into English.  Jackson looks exceedingly bored, but the pack can tell that it’s a façade; he missed them and they know it.  Julie, just back from her job in St. Louis, is playing wingwoman for Dimya as he hits on virtually everyone attending.  Stiles catches her eye at one point, and she smiles back at him.

Derek and Peter are in the back squabbling about some last-minute detail or other.  Melding the traditions of a werewolf wedding and a hunter wedding was no easy task, but under all the surface protests and the _constant_ bickering, everyone could tell that the two were absolutely loving putting all of this together.  Of course, no one said anything about it; Derek had called Scott one morning, mumbled, “I’m planning your wedding,” then hung up.  And that was that.

When the music starts, Stiles runs back to his position as best man beside his brother, fist-bumping him in solidarity.  “It’s about time, dude.”

 

~~~

During the reception, Stiles is shocked to see Cora approaching him with Eric.  ‘Oh no,’ he panics internally.  ‘This is not good…’

She obviously wants to be anywhere else but here.  Eric runs up to him, screaming, “AFFA!  AFFA!”  Stiles scoops up his favourite Hale and tosses him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, to Eric’s great delight.

“Were you a good little furball for your Aunt Cora?”  Eric just keeps shrieking joyfully.

“He’s a good kid,” Cora begins tightly.  Stiles keeps his voice even.

“He is.”

“I’m glad that…”  She rolls her eyes, trying to avoid saying it.  “You’re good for them.  I haven’t seen Derek this happy since he was 14.  So, thanks.”

Stiles blinks.  This is as good of an apology as he’s ever going to get from Derek’s little sister, and he’s sure as hell going to take it.

“No problem.”  They look at each other in understanding.  Eric starts squirming, so Stiles rights him, the moment broken.  As Cora goes back to her husband, Stiles watches her with wonder.  And for neither the first nor the last time since taking down Aiden, he thinks about how happy he is that he decided to come back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh wow, this story went a lot further than I thought it'd go. Thank you so much for reading and commenting; I'm always shocked by how positive the response to this has been! If you've been waiting for Stiles to drop some well-deserved fire-and-brimstone, I'm sorry you were disappointed; it just wasn't where I thought Stiles was at. I like to think Stiles is more mature than I am.
> 
> And now, I'm gonna go cry over last night's episode.

**Author's Note:**

> Teen Wolf and Frank Turner aren't mine.


End file.
